


gritpaper, lathe

by chuchisushi



Series: bind up your brittle battalion; we march again to war [4]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Character Study, Established Relationship, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Unreliable Narrator, he is the worst, making shit up about the guardians, this fic is basically chirrut going on an extended tangent and hijacking the thread, where the pre-canon takes place essentially via extended flashback, where the pre-relationship takes place via extended flashback
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-05 13:34:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10309238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chuchisushi/pseuds/chuchisushi
Summary: Baze's great hands are broad and warm and shape metal and plexglass, wood and people.Or: Chirrut breaks his staff and goes to pester his husband to fix it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> credit for this fic idea goes to [BobbyZinger](http://archiveofourown.org/users/BobbyZinger/pseuds/BobbyZinger), who prompted something with artsy Baze ages ago. This isn't quite artsy Baze, but it started in the vicinity of the idea at least.
> 
> credit to the garden growers goes to [roselightsaber](http://archiveofourown.org/users/roselightsaber/pseuds/roselightsaber), who was gracious enough to allow me to borrow the idea as something baze would be likely to ramble about.
> 
> and thanks as ever go to [my brother](http://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus), who should stop indulging me by betaing if he wants to stop being called out in the author's notes

Chirrut jabs Baze unerringly in the softest part of his side with the end of his staff. “Baze,” he demands, and Baze grunts, the irritable noise bleeding into an aggravated, “ _What?_ ” as Chirrut makes to poke him again. Baze catches Chirrut’s staff in one grease-stained hand before it can make contact, half-rolls from where he’s lying on his back, squirmed under three-fourths of a partly disassembled ground-to-air turret, to glower at Chirrut, grumpy at being interrupted.

Chirrut tugs gently. Baze, for all the thunderheads surely clouding his face, releases his grip instantly at the first hint of motion. “Chirrut,” Baze begins, and Chirrut flips his staff over in his hands to forestall the scolding he can sense on the tip of Baze’s tongue, presenting it down towards him instead.

“It,” Chirrut tells him, with a waggle of its length, “sounds off.” He doesn’t shift when Baze grabs the weapon again, just loosens his grip and lets the polished wood slip from his hands, silky-smooth like a whisper of breath shared. There are the sounds of cloth rustling as Baze sits up straight, as he bends to examine the resonating holder that contains a kyber shard, and Chirrut waits, patient like he is not for so many other things, for Baze’s appraisal.

“How did you manage this,” Baze grumbles, then, as Chirrut opens his mouth to reply, “No, don’t answer that. I know it’ll just give me a headache.” Chirrut closes his mouth and grins instead. Baze scoffs at him, and the sound comes out fond rather than brusque. “Can you bear with it for a day?” There is the subtle _thwap_ of wood gently meeting skin as Baze flips Chirrut’s staff once more, catching it in his opposite hand to offer it to Chirrut, crystal first. Chirrut tips his head thoughtfully, judging the sporadic hum of the kyber as it approaches, and then heaves a theatrical sigh.

“I had hoped for a miracle, but alas! It seems my aspirations will have to wait a little longer.” Baze snorts even as Chirrut accepts back his weapon, twirling it evaluatingly before lowering it to set the end upon the duracrete floor.

“You’ll be fine so long as you stay out of trouble,” Baze tells him, though it’s also more than half a question, too, for them. Chirrut smiles something smaller and softer in response and steps forward to bend down, aiming for Baze’s voice and finding the span of his forehead from it. He presses lips to it, warmth welling up in his chest at the small answering surge in Baze through the Force, like water rising to meet him, and doesn’t care about the grease smear he just barely catches.

“If you insist,” Chirrut sing-songs, then pulls away.

Chirrut leaves Baze for his class that afternoon, teaching hand to hand to those Rebels that want it. Continues to dictate what he remembers of the Guardians’ dogma about the Force and how their bodies intertwined with it to holodecks and flimsi sheets and audiences, too, when someone finds what he’s saying interesting. He does his best to not exaggerate, clarifies where he can the fuzziness of his own recollections. Says, more than once, that Baze would be the better to ask about this or that. His husband had always been more interested in the theoretical than Chirrut. Spent a surprising (perhaps, to an outsider) amount of time wrapped up in his own thoughts, pondering. Chirrut loves him for it, of course, his silly, cerebral beloved, and dusts off more often memories of those earlier days, when Chirrut had spent hours watching Baze fight the flop of his long hair into his eyes whenever he read.

Now, after Scarif, he is… more aware of how the time they’ve had is a blessing. Realizes once again, once more, the _enormity_ of what had been lost in the Temple’s fall, all those decades ago, when faced now with a farmer’s child that shone like a sun, that bent the sense of the air about him to Chirrut’s perception. He knows Baze can feel it, too. How the boy could grow, the potential that haunts him intertwined with a kindness like honey, thick and sweet and persistent despite what he’d already lost.

Chirrut sympathizes. He knows the strength of those who endeavor to remain kind in worlds and times like these. Baze does not speak of it. Does not speak of those years they spent apart as Baze found his feet once more.

Chirrut does not mind. Knows, instead, that Baze has been making his own plans, recording what he knows in his own way by training the young Princess in marksmanship – that that was his way of passing on what had been and what survived, ensuring the future, entrusting it in the hands of a woman that blazes like a star to both of them. It makes Chirrut smile, bittersweet, at the resemblance, at the familiarity, at targets marked with black scorch marks placed by Force-sensitivity.

He and Baze find each other later, both entering the mess hall at the same time and gravitating to their other half unerring despite Chirrut’s lack of sight, despite the tiredness he can feel settled into Baze’s frame. He runs a hand over his husband when they meet – the clasp of his fingers about Baze’s wrist, light pressure as he follows the length and breadth of it up towards his shoulder. The feel of Baze in the Force swells, just a little, like a pull of air held within strong lungs, even as Baze breathes out.

“Sit,” Baze tells him, turns his arm underneath Chirrut’s hand to take the other by the elbow, gently leading him to a table. Chirrut finds a seat by the click of his staff against plastic, by the soft rustle of sound returned to his ears, translating out into space.

He sits. Baze says, “Wait. I’ll get us something,” before he turns and fords out into the rest of the hall.

Chirrut waits.

 

“The turret is almost repaired,” Baze tells Chirrut as they eat. “I’ll need to grind a part. I have some loaned tools. Then I’ll take care of the reverb.” Chirrut hums through his mouthful and reaches out across the table with one hand. Baze takes it, instantly, and Chirrut feels his lips stretch helplessly into a smile. He squeezes, and Baze grunts, once, before applying himself once again to his food.

Their quarters on Hoth are not grand, and, like the rest of the base, are cold. But – the cold they are used to. Hoth at least lacks the bite of the wind. Chirrut and Baze have both done what they can to cushion against the temperature. They share one bed, one refresher unit, and Chirrut lets Baze have the rest of the space to devote to what he can do for the Alliance; Chirrut sits cross-legged atop their blankets, his staff laid over his knees as he listens to Baze setting up his workbench. The part is a crystal – of course it’s a crystal – and Baze settles himself at his bench and Chirrut hears the squeak of a swiveling arm turning, the soft rasp of Baze cleaning off surfaces, the catching rubbery ticks as his husband skins into a pair of disposable gloves. Chirrut doesn’t care about the details of what exactly Baze is doing – he’d never earned weaponsmith bars for a reason – so he doesn’t speak. Lets Baze have his peace and meditates instead in bouts of minutes at a time.

He spends the spaces inbetween watching Baze’s aura, the way it has expanded further, out and open and blossoming about his form, spreading itself thin and translucent with his concentration. Chirrut tells him, sometimes, that he can hear Baze thinking too loudly, and Baze does not know the truth – that Chirrut _can_ somewhat, can distinguish between the airy, wide-open way his husband flowers in assessing thought and the way he drags, sullen and weighted, when he falls into self-recrimination, into the contemplation of things that hurt his heart. If this is the ripple of light upon, through, clear water, then the latter is Baze drowning in refuse-clogged depths.

(Chirrut would dive for him, hold his breath until his lungs ached to find him in such dark. Of course he would. Of course.)

“Give it here,” Baze grunts, and Chirrut startles out of his thoughts. He shifts and lifts his staff, swings it out to point in the direction of Baze’s voice and presence. He feels the jolt of contact through the wood as Baze takes ahold of the end of it, and Chirrut lets go. Closes his hands around nothing, folding them before he puts them in his lap. There are the sounds of Baze setting his staff down on his workbench, the clink of tools, metal against metal. One soft, mild curse Baze says, under his breath, and then, “Here. Catch.”

Chirrut’s hand comes flying up, unerring, to close around the sliver of kyber Baze has freed from the amplifier as it spins through the air, and Chirrut breathes out and hums harmonic the note that it sings through his skin. Lets his eyes half-lid as he settles, slowly, back into position. He runs his fingers over the familiar edges of it, the sharpest lines worn smooth over the years by Chirrut’s touch and the soft buzz of it in its cradle atop his staff, and Chirrut takes the time of several uninterrupted minutes to relearn its unamplified voice once more.

“Focus is the friend of the diligent, Baze Malbus,” he sing-songs after, the shard’s voice overspilling from his lips as he speaks. Baze snorts.

“You still smile like a sunstruck dreamer at the first touch of kyber even after all these years,” he returns, then there’s the rustle of fabric as Baze shifts back towards his bench. Chirrut grins even more broadly. He slips off the bed and pads across the floor in socked feet (a begrudging concession to the ice) to drape himself over Baze’s shoulders. Baze grunts, once, and turns his head to scrape the bristles of his beard and stubble across Chirrut’s cheek before he returns his full attention to his work. Chirrut holds onto the kybersong in his hand and watches his husband’s thoughts and devotion spin themselves out about them in the Force, shimmering multi-layered like the petals of a peony or lotus. It’s cold, their surroundings, but it’s not so different, this, despite all the changes they’ve weathered. (It still stirs Chirrut to laughter at times to realize that he had set foot on five worlds in the span of these few months, he who had spent the first fifty-two years of his life sand-bound on Jedha.)

It is different, but this has not changed: the flex of Baze’s muscles underneath Chirrut’s weight, the soft rasp of gritpaper, the clink of tools against strata. Chirrut remembers the way Baze’s back would curve and strain underneath the push of reshaping the metal of the Temple’s practice lightbows, the way tension would make his trapezius bulge when Baze fought their draw to rehouse them. Chirrut remembers the heat of the forge and the acrid stench of solder and the confusion, disbelief upon hearing that Baze Malbus had begged a boon of the Temple Grandmasters, called upon the honor inherent in all the marks of valor he’d earned to pledge his skill towards the creation of a weapon that needed a sliver of kyber to sing.

The rumors had abounded after – Baze Malbus, one of their most devoted, tall and proud, going to both knees to touch his forehead upon the stone; Baze Malbus, who had risen as one of the Temple’s most diversely skilled, pledging the worth of all his years and all his accolades earned upon a weapon that he would craft that needed kyber. The shame that he would face in failure…

But Baze instead had drawn Chirrut aside nights later and bent his great head to him (the edges of the sight had been indistinct, Baze’s face haloed in gold for the light of the lamps and Chirrut’s slowly fading vision as his cataracts grew) and told him in a soft rumble that he would be going on something of a pilgrimage. That it would be at least a month, and Baze’s eyes had bored into Chirrut’s so dark and intense, like shards of flame-shattered glass, that all Chirrut had been able to do was nod. Had been something like _transfixed_ beneath that stare, predator turned prey under its weight.

Baze had left the next dawn, and it took two long months for him to return to NiJedha with four spans of uneti wood, still bleeding sap, clutched in his hands. The wood had gone into the deepest chill that the Temple could give, suspended in a kyber pool miles beneath its foundations. It had sunk to the bottom, and Chirrut hadn’t needed to be there to feel the sigh of relief from his fellow Guardians, their emotions rippling through the Force. Good, then. Still good.

Baze had slept for two days, after, body exhausted by the brutal, nonstop trek he’d taken to ensure that the uneti would still bleed upon his return to the Temple, still work for whatever he intended to make.

On the third day, Baze wakes and eats and meditates, and Chirrut sits at his back and cannot help but fear for the way Baze’s shoulderblades jut against his skin now. He does not speak of it. Baze has resolved himself. He knows the risks.

Baze dives that afternoon for the uneti, spreads out their lengths on the stone. Chirrut sees with his failing eyes the halo of gold lamplight and the dark huddle of Baze where he kneels with his hands splayed across the cut wood’s span, watches ruby pearlescence pool underneath the fibers slowly as the uneti warms enough to bleed once more.

Baze chooses the length of wood he will use for the weapon. The remaining three are given to the Temple – one to the Grandmaster that had first guided Baze’s craft. One to the smiths of the Temple, to split as needed. One to a girl Baze’s senior, whose arms rippled with muscle and shone with ink, tattooed tallies of her accomplishments, a line for each legacy weapon she had already made. Her smile had been demure, but she had cackled like a hyena, head thrown back, at the honor of dedication. (In five years’ time, she will ascend to the title of Grandmaster wielding twin uneti war fans.)

Chirrut knows that Baze will carve the wood, that the firing process will harden its sap through and through, fix it preserved so that it will turn aside even the bite of the sharpest blades. Chirrut knows, too, that the selfsame sap that caused uneti to be so cherished will also render the wood difficult to work, drag at the tools meant to shape it. It is as laborious to form as any metal alloy, has to be stored in coldest chill inbetween. Baze moves from their shared quarters to a monk’s cell in the kyber caves themselves so he can minimize the amount of time the wood spends in transport, sleeps amongst his tools and the detritus of his carving.

Chirrut knows all of this about uneti and more despite having never picked up a lathe or grinder because there are nights that he spends down in Baze’s draughty cell pressed back to back with the other man, listening to Baze’s voice wandering tired-drunk from topic to topic as he dries his hair. He learns about uneti, about the garden growers, the machines that keep the soil viable, about firegems and ultrachrome and demicot silk and a hundred topics more as Chirrut collects curls of uneti into the cup of a hand to add to what Baze has saved. Nothing is wasted. This is honor, too, for the sacrifice Baze made of himself in the pilgrimage for the material.

Baze works, takes on his Temple duties once more little by little, around the carving and the curing. Chirrut doesn’t hear more about the process, not much more than just enough to gain a vague understanding of where Baze stands. Baze is equally tight-lipped to his peers, and the rumors start to spread once more. Baze Malbus is building a bow. Baze Malbus is building a blade. Baze Malbus is creating something new, something strange and lethal and wonderful, and over and over all the words turn once more to the kyber, whispers shared in rooms and halls wondering for what and why Baze had needed it. (The susurruses of sound over Chirrut’s skin make the little hairs at the back of his neck stand, make him bristle like hackles raised. Annoying, annoying, annoying. He bares his teeth at the dark shapes of people and complains to Baze, who laughs at his petulance even as he eats the half of the pao Chirrut shoves at him.)

(One night in Baze’s ascetic cell, Baze murmurs to Chirrut, “Choose one,” and opens the cup of his palms. “You’re more Force-touched than me – I can’t tell – ”

Baze pours kyber shards into Chirrut’s hands where they’re open to receive them, and Chirrut draws in a breath so sharply he breathes in Baze’s warmth for how closely they’re pressed together, knees to knees.

“Baze – oh, _Baze_ – ” Chirrut chokes out, and the cacophony spills from his lips in hitched sobs, kybersong ringing in his teeth and marrow. It’s too _much_ , but Chirrut grits out, “Alright. Okay,” because Baze had _asked_ , and opens his fingers enough to let facets spill through, gives himself over to the ebb and flow of Baze’s aura he can sense in the Force all rainbow-iridescence shielding them both.

In the end there are unshed tears spiking Chirrut’s lashes together and one crystal left in his hands. Baze holds Chirrut’s wrists, then shifts with gentle, kind pressure to close Chirrut’s grip around that last. Chirrut does not mention how they shake. Does not speak of how he’s trembling, too, just sits still and ringing as Baze collects the discarded kyber back into the pouch he’d taken them from, picking each off the cloth of Chirrut’s lap.

“I’ll be back soon. I have to return these,” Baze rumbles to him. Stands, but grips one of Chirrut’s shoulders near where it meets his neck. “Stay here. I’ll be back soon,” he repeats, and Chirrut closes his eyes and for once in these past long months doesn’t care that it barely makes a change in what he sees.)

(And a year to the day of Baze’s pilgrimage Baze stands black-robed and painted fierce before the gathered ranks of the Grandmasters, with all the Guardians and initiates and children of the Temple arrayed in the hollows of the grand hall behind him. He holds a straight length in his great hands, and the fabric it’s wrapped in is marked, coloring red from the ochre on his palms. Beads whisper in his hair.

“Guardian Baze Malbus, fulgurite-crowned,” the eldest Grandmaster intones. “You bring to us a weapon birthed from your labor and craft as evidence of your mastery,” and Baze raises his chin and answers, “Yes.”

His steps land solid as he crosses cold stone to the first Grandmaster, letting the cloth fall from what he holds; Chirrut can feel the way the interest of the crowd spikes, the way attention swivels and refocuses, but he barely hears Guardian Mry beside him whisper, “A _staff?_ ” because all his mind and soul catch on a familiar soaring song, a melody that he’d felt thrumming against his lifelines lit bright, bright, bright. He barely hears another Grandmaster ask, “And what purpose does the kyber serve?” for the way Baze surges triumphantly incandescent, all a plume like starbird wings, transfiguring fire, and Chirrut is already shifting his weight even as Baze accepts back the weapon, because two weeks ago Baze had told him, “Practice the height staff. Trust me – you’ll know soon,” with the weight of his gaze like the pressure of armor, like the edge of a blade against Chirrut’s bared neck. Chirrut feels it now once more despite the way the focus of the crowd shifts; Baze’s burning gaze lies heavy on his skin and Chirrut breathes in flame and kybersong as Baze thunders, stentorian, “ _Chirrut Îmwe!_ ”

Chirrut’s hand flies up, unerring, and the smack of flame-hardened uneti wood against flesh rings out into the utter silence that falls in the great hall.

Chirrut straightens. Stands to his full height, his feet spreading into stance. He can feel his lips peeling back from his teeth, can feel the way fear suddenly spikes in those peers nearest him as they realize the significance of his gold-crowned grin here and now with a weapon in his hands. Chirrut hears cloth rustle as they give him room, as they’re all trained to do when one like him takes the field, and Chirrut exhales ash and steam into the cold of the hall as he spins the staff, once, learning the feel of it. His gaze never leaves the pillar of exultation Baze is in the Force even as Chirrut throws himself into motion in a flurry of robes and snapping cloth, twirls through the third form, the sixth, swoops into the fourth as he begins to advance, step by implacable step, bare feet on stone; and the kyber sings to him bright, so bright, loud enough for Chirrut to dip and swirl around those that do not move fast enough to give him space, dodging around the ripples they create in the flow. Chirrut can feel when the Grandmasters realize what he’s done.

“The kyber,” Baze calls out, “was needed for _this_ ,” and his voice soars into something like joy as Chirrut steps out into the open expanse of the great hall, curves his back out of the tenth form and down to slam the end of his staff against the stone, the impact cracking like an explosion, like a bite, like a roar, in answer. Chirrut stands shoulders back with his scars gilt alight, armed by the man that blazes in the Force for him, for what he’s done, and feels his smile stretch broader, wider, all gold and sharp edges for the honor he’d earned in his ferocity.

“Guardian Chirrut Îmwe, rampart thorn,” a Grandmaster calls out. “Do you and the weapon you bear concede to this test of mastery?”

And in reply, Chirrut carols out, kyber-bright with the song humming under his hand:

“We do!”)

“What are you thinking about, dreamer?” Baze rumbles from underneath Chirrut’s sprawl. Chirrut tips his face into the press of an ungloved palm when it rises back to meet him, hums a contented melody into Baze’s skin.

“Just reminiscing in my old age. Thinking about how my beloved husband presented two weapons for his fourth bar all those years ago.” Chirrut laughs as he feels Baze blush, the other’s ears heating with it.

“We weren’t even courting then,” Baze grumbles. “ _Husband_ is stretching it.”

“True enough, true enough.” Chirrut turns his head back to nuzzle into Baze’s hair, breathes in the smell of him and sighs happily. “But I knew the second my staff landed in my hand from your throw that you’d marry me one day.”

“Soothsayer then, were we?”

“No, no. Just a man who knows your heart.” Chirrut closes his eyes. “All of that work for me – and then stating it so in front of all our peers and the Grandmasters – how could I possibly have missed such love? I may have been newly blind, but I wasn’t a _fool_.” Chirrut laughs when Baze blushes harder. “I hope the payouts from the betting pool were good.”

“You are never going to let that trial go, are you?” Baze asks rhetorically.

“The Grandmasters gave you your fourth bar both for the staff and for restoring _me_ to the field, and you know it, Baze Malbus.” Chirrut leans into him harder. “For a fulgurite-crowned, you certainly were dense at times.”

“Oh, hush. And how was _I_ to know that I’d had such a hand in shaping this mad dog that the brothers and sisters and others dragged in? Give this here.” Chirrut lets Baze pry the kyber shard from his hand without opening his eyes, just sighs in response instead and brings up that arm to press his palm against the swell of Baze’s chest.

“Oh, I don’t know. The fact that we’ve been following each other about since we were ten _might_ have been a hint, beloved.” He yelps out a laugh when Baze reaches back to swat him on the hip.

“The absolute worst,” Baze grumbles, then says, “There. Your staff is fixed. Now stop trying to smack everyone in the Alliance around with it.”

Chirrut hums in reply, then tugs at Baze without unearthing himself. Baze grunts.

“Just let me polish it and clean up – ” he starts, only for Chirrut to whine, “It will still be there in the morning,” pulling again.

“Come to bed,” Chirrut continues. “The blankets are cold without you.”

“Says the man who puts off heat like a forge!” Baze splutters. “The blankets will be cold whether or not I’m there, you know.” But Chirrut smiles as Baze stands anyway, belaying his protesting words.

“I can think,” Chirrut replies, “of several ways it would be better with two,” tips his head back and smiles rakishly up at the other.

“Hmph,” Baze says.

But he kisses him anyway, his clever, great hands coming up to settle about Chirrut’s waist. Chirrut hums into their lips like hymnals, like devotion, and willingly, eagerly, shapes himself to the breadth of his beloved once more.


End file.
